Author: firstgenerationmess

Just a little brown girl trying to survive out in the big, big world :)

My Alcoholic Tendencies Are Taking A Quick Ten

For the first time since I came back to school, I decided to retire my tube top and alcoholic concoction and instead throw on my running shorts, put on a face mask, and snuggle in my bed and watch American Horror Story. That is right everybody, I am completely sober; my half gal of Svedka has not budged since the weekend prior and my joints and blunts are stowed away in my backpack for another night. I should be studying for my big Anatomy exam that’s this Monday, but for some reason I am here, writing. It has been over a week since I last posted something on this website, but I feel like a lot has happened to me mentally that I just need to…I don’t know, rant? Complain? Vent out? I honestly don’t even know what the premise of this post will be, yet here I am, writing in my dorm room on a Saturday night while my friends are tormenting their livers and lungs with juuls and jungle juice. I guess the only efficient way to do this is to do it in a list-like form. So let’s start with the my current number one “issue” that has been on my mind:

1. Emotional Feels and My Self-Worth as a Woman

It’s the time of year I guess: that time of year when I meet somebody knew, start talking to them more and more, and suddenly can’t stop thinking about them. I see this person, and I suddenly have this tightness in my chest and start rambling in my mind. This is something that should be almost exciting to others, but for me this is anything but. In fact, it’s more like a hindrance.

I know I’m not beautiful.

This is such a sad mindset to have, but it is a mindset I bear. My body is far from perfect, my face is only partially adequate when I paint it with products I spend way too much money on, and my go to wardrobe include oversized sweatshirts and leggings. I’m almost a thousand percent sure that whenever I walk down the road, people don’t look twice my way, and if they are, it’s probably because of the beautiful blond walking five feet in front of me.

Despite my not-so great relationship with God, I am believer in fate, and even worse, I am a believer in soulmates. Maybe it’s because of my unhealthy obsession of Disney movies and the large amount of romantic YA novels I read in high school, but for some reason I have been conditioned to think that there is a person for everyone. But I am so impatient. I am smart enough to know that the first person you date won’t be your last, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to experience that almost perfect love story.

This is all probably all so over dramatic, but what can I say: I’m pretty dramatic overall.

Side note: if you are feeling the same way I’m feeling, do not listen to Queen Naija’s “Butterfly”. Just don’t. It’s too fucking real.

2. What the Fuck am I Doing Here

I’ve been contemplating my role lately. My role here at school, my role in life, my role in the universe, yada yada yada. Existentialism is a real thing folks, and yes, apparently you can have it sober. As I was reading about glycolysis and the electron transport chain and the fucking citric acid cycle, I had a moment of semi-clarity: why the fuck am I doing this. Why am I in Spokane Washington reading about metabolism? Why the hell am I causing myself this much stress by being in school?

I’ve been following a lot of travel pages on Instagram lately. There are people close to my age on white sandy beaches in the Caribbean or climbing several mountain ranges in Iceland. People are riding elephants in India and are zip lining through the Amazon. And where am I? Writing on a computer in my cramped dorm room on a Saturday night.

Am I actually going to drop out of college and pursue all of this? Probably not. Am I going to change my major to try and find happiness? Probably not. Because money is such a huge goal to achieve here, and because I have to somehow pay back my immigrant parents for literally almost losing their lives to find a better life for me, I feel like I have no choice. I feel like that’s been the common trend about most of the things in my life: I have absolutely no choice.

3. An Unintentional Emotional Attachment

I am not going into specific details about this. But basically, someone who I thought would still be in my life is no longer here. No, they didn’t die. They just…left, without a trace. When I got the news about this, the sudden trail of tears that trickled down my face was an actual shock to me.

Sure, I get attached to people pretty easily, but this was on a whole other level.

After finding out about the news, I rushed to the bathroom and bawled. And I had no idea how to stop. This was such a new feeling, and as it rushed throughout my entire essence, all I wanted was for it to stop. I texted friends and heeded advice, and when none of it was working, I even took desperate measures and called my mother, not the greatest person to talk to about emotions.

This event has been floating throughout my mind this weekend, yet for some reason I still do not know how to deal with it. The closest thing I’ve had to a loss is my grandpa dying, and I was A) six and B) had no idea what the hell was going on.

I still have no idea what to do about this nuance feeling. I just really want to get it situated as soon as possible.

And That’s the Tea Folks

As I finish writing this, I am realizing how low key therapeutic this is. Writing in a room by myself with only the sum of Maxwell seeping through my speakers has got to be my favorite Saturday night endeavor of the semester so far. So I know that this post isn’t as happy and hopeful as I promised, but despite all this dreary gloom and doom, I am still hopeful for the semester. I really do feel like something is going to happen to me. I couldn’t tell you what, but I just have this feeling in gut. Hopefully it comes true. Hopefully it’s marvelous. Marvelous enough to actually liven up this website.

Drowning Minus the Water Part

The last time I was here, I wrote about my worries of sophomore year and the possibility of me failing, yada yada yada. Well that was a few weeks ago, so let me enlighten everyone with a quick update:

I. Am. Drowning.

In high school, I was very good at balancing my social life and my academic life. I would casually hang out with my friends after classes and after school we would all head to Starbucks and study/gossip, all while still achieving some pretty decent grades. Well I learned last year that you can’t really do that in college. In order to actually succeed, I literally have to isolate myself from the rest of humanity. For the past week I have basically lived in the Nursing and Human Physiology building, spending at least five hours in the basement everyday trying to study and understand the material. By the time I leave it’s the dead of night and I either have to travel clear across campus to get home or make an awkward phone call to campus security to give me a ride. My backpack is never light, my back is always aching, and every time I do something that doesn’t involve my nose in a book, there is an overwhelming sense of guilt that floods my subconscious. And by the time the weekend comes along, I spend the day time making my brain cells work their asses off and spend the night time killing them off with every chug of my Svedka/Coke concoction that I consume.

And the worst part of it all? It’s only week three.

When you’re in college, are studying a difficult major, and have a sever case of FOMO, your priorities aren’t always straight. One minute you’re on the grind and learning about the different types of epithelial tissues and the next minute, you get a text a guy you’ve been low key talking to and suddenly your mind goes to mush and you lose your train of thought.

The theme for this semester is to grind, grind, grind. But I am also human: I crave social interactions and creating fond memories, and the idea of the majority of this semester being spent nose deep in my physics textbook doesn’t sound the most appealing to me.

My mom always told me that when you’re studying what I’m studying, you can not have everything: you always have to make sacrifices. But why is that? Why am I subjected to choose one thing and not have everything?

Well, until I find away to balance academics and social interactions, I am forced to rant about it on my stupid little blog.

Hopefully by the time I post again, something marvelous would have happened so that I can actually not be so gloomy and existential.

The First Day of Literally the Hardest Year of My College Career

Well today was the day: the first day of sophomore year. I know my activity on this website has been pretty low, but I honestly do believe that I should be documenting the most pinnacle moments in my life, and boy was this one of them. I woke up almost two hours before my class, wore an actual dress with heels, my eyebrows actually made an appearance, and my overall confidence was through the roof. “I’m going to make sophomore year my bitch” was a phrase that would be ingrained in my subconscious over and over and over again. So when I arrived at my first class of the day, a statistics class with a focus in human physiology (my major), my confidence was absolutely through the roof.

After that class, a pointless physics lab, and studying for almost three hours in the basement of our main building, I began to comprehend what this year actually was. This was the drop period: the moment where almost fifty percent of my major class would switch majors because the classes and work load was too much for them. And realizing that absolutely shook my confidence to the CORE! Those self-empowering thoughts I had in the morning soon turned into thoughts of despair. “I can’t do this”, “You’re not smart enough for this major”, “Just quit now while you’re ahead”, “You’re going to crash and burn”. These thoughts were louder than screams, louder than thunder and lightening, louder than explosions five feet away from you. They were so loud that it would affect me physically, sending shivers down my spine and making me almost want to faint.

All of these thoughts, and I’ve literally only had two classes today.

My goals are pretty set: I want to help people. I know I have hands that were meant to heal. But sometimes I wonder why that one simple goal felt eons and eons away. People are telling me not to worry, that these are the least of your problems, that I’m young and don’t know what it means for life to be hard for me. Sure, life will get harder for me, as it will for any human being, but I am living in the now; not the past, not the distant future, but NOW. And to be completely honest, I’m fucking terrified. I know I have people to back me up: my family who I love, my friends who I confide in, my advisor who encourages me to never give up. I have all these crutches for if I do end up falling, but that doesn’t make that terrible feeling inside you go away.

I’m honestly praying to whoever/whatever is in the sky playin games up there that I’m worrying for nothing; that everything is just a simple delusion in my way-too-psyched-out-mind.

My college years are supposed to be the best years of my life. I should be making mistakes, going to parties, hopelessly falling in love with random upper class boys only to have my heart broken a week later. Yet I’m afraid that most of it will be spent stressing out, having anxiety attacks, and wanting to give up when things get tough.

I honestly hate to say it, but only time will tell what will happen to me this school year.

The Relief of Summer

As of today, I officially have a month left until I have to return to my bittersweet experience that is college. I think if I could describe this summer in one word, I think that word would be “clarity”. This summer has honestly made me realize what I need in order to be happy and who I need in order for me to stay…well, me. Being at home for this long has definitely been the best for me, but I am honestly so ready for me to head back to Spokane.

Same Summer, Different Experiences

The summer after high school and the summer after my first year of college have honestly been so drastically different. The summer after high school was honestly just a time to spend time with your classmates that you were already seeing every day before. You were seeing the same people that you saw in your classes previously, and if you wanted to see other people, you at least knew they were in a thirty minute range of you. But after going to a different college than your close high school comrades, by the time you see them in the summer, whether it is subtle or not, you notice a slight growth or change in that person. You don’t know what might’ve caused it, nor do you know the experiences that they have went through. But either way, you notice it, and the change is noticeable enough to completely change the way you guys interact. Sure, you could still be the greatest of friends and get back to where you left off, but there is still this itching feeling inside of you that wonders if they’re telling you everything. There are even some people that you rarely see anymore, completely changing the way you guys interact. It’s an eerie feeling that you sometimes can’t shake off.

What I have learned after my first year of college is that high school friends are completely different than high school friends. With high school friends, you see them every day, hang out with them every day, and have a sleepover here and there to strengthen bonds. But with college friends, you are literally living with them. They literally see you at your best and worst moments and are there for you as soon as you send the SOS text. Even now, as I am in my bed writing this, I yearn to be with my college family so much. Facetiming and texting can only do so much these days that the day I have to go back to school is a day.

I think the one thing that everyone has in common is that we’re all growing up. These different experiences we face, both at home and in college, are steps to making us the person we were meant to be in life. As someone who doesn’t know if they believe in God but still believes in the idea of fate (I don’t know how this makes sense. It just DOES), I do believe that the people we interact with were meant to interact with us and are stepping stones to who we were meant to be. Summer vacation is just a way for us to grow up without the stressors that school can provide.

So as I begin to bid my summer vacation farewell, I await the growth all of my beautiful friends will obtain during the next obstacle in their life: sophomore year.

The Big 2-0

At the end of this year, I will be turning twenty years old.

Twenty-fucking-years.

It didn’t really hit me until I was talking to a close cousin of mine. I was basically bragging about the fact that I was retiring the one in my age and stepping up in the world by replacing it with a 2 (as if it really is a big deal?) and I asked her about what she was doing when she turned twenty (she’s 33 right now). She then starts going on about how she was able to work full time while in community college, had a place of her own that she was able to pay off, and was some how able to stay fit, eat healthy, and maintain a healthy relationship with her then-boyfriend-now-husband. All of this was happening when she was twenty years old.

I was absolutely speechless.

I’m half-way through nineteen and where was I? A college student with a sea of debt rising to my neck, studying something that I thought I was passionate about but am not really sure, drinking Dutch Bros daily and eating Jimmy Johns every other day, and working a part time job at a pizzeria. I still ask my parents for money from time to time. I don’t feel like an adult at all. I still feel like a child.

I think back to my 17/18 year old self and wish I could slap that bitch silly for thinking that she was basically an adult. I remember feeling so high and mighty driving my own car that my parents bought, being able to afford the five dollar addiction that was caffeine, and carrying a handbag instead of a backpack as I roamed the halls of my high school. I thought I was the shit back then when I really wasn’t.

Turning twenty has made me realize that I need to get my shit together and fast. I hate the fact that I am so reliant on my parents because they have already done so much more than I believe they should. I want to become an independent, but I am not the only one that’s stopping myself from doing so. Society as a whole has made it so hard to become an individual. I remember hearing about some sort of triangle that represented life. Each corner represented a necessity: education, money, and a social life. It is impossible to have all three corners, but you could have two of the three. This represented living in society and how it was almost impossible to have it all. I feel like I currently possess the education and social life corners, but when it comes to money my funds are as dry as Donald Trump’s chapped looking lips. I want to have it all and still be happy with myself when I turn twenty, but I feel like it is nearly impossible.

Turning 20: The Gate That Leads To An Unclear Future

When I turned eighteen, I thought everything was as clear as crystal: I knew what college I was going to, I knew what I wanted to study, what I wanted to do after college, where I wanted to live in the future. For some reason I thought that figuring out your entire fucking future was as easy as creating a Pinterest wall. Once I turned nineteen, I realized the future I created so easily would not come so easy.

As I near the age of twenty, I realize that my futures is like wearing glasses in a sauna: foggy and unclear. For years ever since I was a little girl I was so sure of what I wanted to do in life: to become a doctor. That dream carried on for the next thirteen years, and I was so sure that while the journey would be hard, the goal could be achievable. But after my first year of college, I began to wonder if that dream was just that: a dream.

A part of that dream is still genuine to my heart. With my beautiful MD, I would travel the world and help those who didn’t have the basic health care that we have here. And I’m not talking like Spain or Belgium or any of those highly-developed areas. I wanted to go to places like the Middle East and Africa; places that were constantly at war and were destroying those hospitals that people needed. I still want to do all that very much, but the road to get there seems treacherous, as if I was destined to fail the journey.

If money wasn’t an issue, all I would want to do is travel, help others, and write. I feel like it’s those three things that really make me the happiest. If money wasn’t an issue, I genuinely think I would’ve dropped out of college by now and join some sort of volunteer group that aided Palestinians and wrote about my experiences.

But here I am: losing money as I gain an education to get a job that’ll hopefully earn me more money.

I am praying to whoever the hell is up there in the sky to make my twentieth a year of clarity, because I think that is truly what I need the most at the moment. I need to find a balance of all three things that I desire that’ll make me happy. Because no matter how nice riches and a successful career sounds, all I want is to be content in life and have no regrets (which I know is humanly impossible, but hey, a girl can try right?).

I also want to grow as a woman when the big 2-0 approaches. I don’t have to become a fully independent person by the time I’m twenty, but even taking the first step would be fantastic. I want to grow emotionally, mentally, physically, and maybe even spiritually if that is what it’ll take to become my own happy individual in society.

So God, Allah, Buddha, Brahma, Ganesha, Zeus, or whoever the hell is ruling the skies above: please please PLEASE make this upcoming year a year of clarity and change. For the love of [insert deity]. Do it for your homegirl.

The analogy that hit too close to home.

I was sitting in my AP English class my junior year of high school. The desks were in a wide circular formation, meaning that it was going to be a deep discussion today. I remember sitting in my desk and watched as my white professor was introducing the theme of class by listing all the authors we had been researching: James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Sojourner Truth, etc. Those were all big red flags to me that today was going to be a racism discussion.

I went to a white high school mind you.

There were two black people out of a class of twenty-something…and this included me.

So I’m sitting in a desk next to the other black girl in my class, both of us shifting uncomfortably in our desks. Our professor was preaching about all the prejudice and hardships that these authors went through when they wrote their books and essays, intriguing the woke and putting the ignorant to sleep. The lecture was going so well, until my professor makes eye contact with me.

“Delina, tell us how you’ve experienced racism and oppression throughout your life?”

My professor asked me those exact words to me from across the rooms, and every brown, blue, green, and grey pair of eyes were shifted towards my direction. Now I like attention as much as the next extravert, but I was not prepared to share my sob story in front of a group of students who would just feel sorry and go along with their day fifty minutes later without a care in the world.

This unit lasted an entire damn week, and every time my professor needed a real life example, there I was, ready to be picked on but no where to hide.

And I know what you’re wondering: what about the other sista that was in my class?

If you wanted to be technical, she was mixed with Syrian and black; basically not black enough for our professor (plus they low key had beef but we ain’t about to talk about that). But it was during one of these lectures I would whisper to my friend during class and randomly tell her, “I feel like a chocolate chip cookie that was accidentally dropped in a sugar cookie.”

And from that day on, that phrase has stuck close to me.

I don’t know why the analogy had involved cookies. Probably because it was the class before lunch and I was starving. But either way, it was still a pretty damn memorable quote of mine that I mentally recall from day to day.

Going from a majorly white high school to a majorly white university has made me realize how much I crave for understanding–how I long to be around other people who could relate what I go through ever day mentally and emotionally. In high school, I had no one to turn to when having this kind of desire. In high school, I faced the emotionally excruciating task of constantly proving to my white peers that I was even black: from the way I walked, to the way I talked, to the way I behaved. But proving was drainingme. Proving what I obviously was was a tiring task that I never wanted to partake in, but was roped into. I could have a brightly lit up name tag that read “Hello, I’m Black” written in bold black letters and would still have to constantly prove myself to others. I went through this daily, yet did not have that solidifying circle that could assure me of my identity.

College: the cancer and the cure

I’m not gonna lie; Gonzaga has a lot of white people. Way more than I thought. Every time I walked throughout campus I felt like I was seeing similar faces everywhere I turned. Whenever I saw a person of color from a distance, a large part of me would fill up with excitement and comfort.

College made me realize that no matter how nice or amazing people are, there was still a layer of ignorance that I could not look away from.

At college, I didn’t just feel like a random chocolate chip in a sugar cookie; I felt like a random chocolate chip in a batch of a dozen sugar cookies. I felt even more isolated. I felt like a number, a percentage, rather than an actual human being.

One day I was in a leadership class. There were four black kids in that class including myself, and there happened to be a day where all four of us happened to be leaving class early for an event called “Diversity Monologues,” an event were a whole bunch of minorities expressed their day to day struggles through the art of poetry. As we all left the class, our professor said something that startled not only us, but everyone in the class.

“There goes Diversity Monologues, taking away our diversity.”

Taking away your diversity?

If we didn’t feel like statistics before, we sure did after that not-so subtle comment.

After that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she said. Her playful tone echoed in my mind like a woodpecker pecking for wood: constantly, unabruptly, and annoyingly. When I voiced my annoyance to others, some didn’t get it. Others were outraged and thought I should have voiced my opinion to the director. But what could I do alone? I am a small percentage, a statistic.

Thankfully though, I found people: people who related to me emotionally and mentally. A group of people who understood what reality was truly like. People who were a part of the small statistic, but could make my small voice louder and influential.

I honestly don’t know if I could survive college without that group honestly.

I’m only one year down, and so much has already happened to me. Honestly, college made me realize I ain’t shit. I still have so much growing to do as a woman. You think that graduating high school and turning eighteen makes you the biggest macho-adult ever, but once I was alone at school, I realized I still have so much to learn and to grow.

A part of me doesn’t feel ready for the many years up ahead for me, but another part of me is also frighteningly excited what lies ahead for me in the coming years.

I have officially become what I’ve been making fun of all my life.

The idea of “blogging” to me was just absolutely absurd–but then again, when I thought of bloggers I thought of beauty bloggers and mommy-blogs. Hell, I would assume that those who were too literate to be on Pinterest would make blogs just to support there aesthetic needs. Yet here I am, sitting on my bed, spending the time to actually create this website just so that I could…just so that I could what exactly?

For me at least, this is just an easier way of me keeping a journal without CONSTANTLY buying new journals.

Do y’all just wake up one day and think to yourself, “Damn, I need myself a journal so I can record everything from my day to day life so that when I’m elderly I can marvel at my youth,” write religiously for a week, and then toss the journal in the PHAT journal graveyard that’s been growing since you were twelve years old? Well, that’s me every damn month. I want to be able to record the good, the bad, and the ugly of the world I see everyday and just record everything I experience. So this is kind of a journal, but I’d like to think of it as a memoir (cause my egotistical ass thinks I’m actually gonna be famous one day).

So who am I exactly?

So my name is Delina Biniam. I am the daughter of two very loud, very strict Eritrean immigrants. Some would classify me as “thickums” since God really did bless me with a booty (and the very annoying large thighs that come with it). I am an emotionally distressed pre-med student (subject to change…?) at Gonzaga University, an institution known for it’s very peppy school spirit and their very known lack of diversity (I’m being for real, there are 12 black girls in a class of 1200…12!). My music taste is basically anything that would be played in AfroPunk with a splash of rap, and I am a complete sucker for Anne Hathaway movies. Unknown to most, I have a passion for writing, and if I wasn’t pressured by the whole first-generation-college-student-tryin-to-make-my-parents-proud-and-pay-them-back-every-cent stigma, I would risk it all to pursue my dream of becoming a novelist. But alas, my life’s a mess, but what else is new.

So why First Generation Mess…?

Because that is exactly what my life is: a mess. The generations before me never had a mess of a life; they were too busy dealing with actual real life struggles like war and colonization. Because I am the first privileged generation, my entire life is a complete guinea pig test: no one knows what the hell is going on, so they’re just gonna go with the flow. I feel like that’s how my life has been going for the past almost-twenty-years. I’m literally rolling with the punches here, so when figuring out the name for this blog, I just felt like this was the most fitting (and relatable to any other second gens).

So what exactly do I want out of this whole “Blog” thing?

I was in need of an outlet. A semi-creative outlet that allows me to pour out my emotions and destress from a day of bullshit without mascara running down my face and a scheduled appointment with my therapist. Some people draw pictures, record videos, write songs, etc. just to relieve themselves. I would write, but since I literally have the handwriting of a seven year old boy, I guess blogging is my new thing.